Slime Pays

continued  The authorities never did state the value of many of the gifts bestowed on Stallings by Moores. Former councilmember Bruce Henderson asked Superior Court to make it a condition of probation that she disclose the value of those gifts. The court nixed the idea.

In announcing the dubious deal, then-U.S. Attorney Gregory Vega said that there was nothing wrong with giving money to a politician -- ignoring the big monetary gains Moores would make, partly through Stallings's votes. After he left office, Vega was named to the purported Ethics Commission.

Shapiro won a lawsuit charging the city council with illegally holding 12 Padres-related closed sessions. After Shapiro also won at the appellate level, the city attorney's office decreed that it would from then on take notes at closed sessions, instead of the city clerk, who had done it for years.

Viewing the foul-smelling activities through the years, Henderson sums it up: "Slime pays."

If U.S. Attorney Lam succeeds in the investigation of possible strip-club bribes -- as well as in her office's probe of Peregrine Systems -- the malefactors may find life, as Cole Porter intoned, "Too Darn Hot."